I finally got around to installing the new OpenOffice 3.0 on my MacBook Pro. The big feature I’ve been waiting for, of course, is that OpenOffice 3 now uses the native Mac GUI. Prior versions only used X11, and Apple’s X11 server kinda sucks. So using OpenOffice 2.4 is a less than optimal experience.
The first thing I did upon installing OpenOffice 3 is to open up my current manuscript. Now, when I write, I use a formatted document, as though I were typing words directly onto the laid-out book pages. This saves time in layout, because the book comes already laid out correctly. (However, I use style sheets, so that I can make changes to the layout, if need be, cheaply and efficiently.)
So the first thing I noticed is that the formatting of my book was all screwed up.
OOo3 found all the correct fonts, but they were all misrendered in one way or another. The primary headline font (CopperplateBold) seemed to render shorter than it should have; though that could have been my imagination, because the secondary headline font (CopperplateLight) rendered too big, with tight letter-spacing (I guess, to make up for the oversized letters). The main font (Palatino) also rendered way too big, and the letter-spacing of my italic text (PalatinoItalic) was way too tight. The drop caps looked like crap, because OOo3 inserted additional gaps above their ascenders and below their baselines–I have no idea why.
Now, I’m sure that if I were to hack with the style sheets, I could probably resolve most of these issues (although I don’t know how I would deal with misrendered drop-caps). I opted instead, for now, to keep using OpenOffice.org 2.4, at least for my current manuscript. I may experiment with it for other manuscripts, but I’m disappointed that the formatting turned out so much different simply by upgrading to a new version. I don’t remember having any significant issues upgrading previous versions of OpenOffice.org.
One possible cause for some of the formatting problems is that because OOo3 runs under the native Mac GUI, it uses the native Mac fonts and the Mac font renderer. (But my understanding is that it uses the old, now deprecated ATSUI API, instead of the new Core Text API.) OOo2/Mac runs under X11, and it uses a different font renderer. So one might expect the fonts to look different now. I just don’t want to have to stop my life in order to hack with the document in order to get it back to the correct proportions. On the other hand, you’d expect 11-point Palatino to look like 11-point Palatino, no matter what font system you were using. But on the other hand, I’ve long known and accepted that I can’t open up my OOo/Mac documents in OOo/Windows and expect them look the same, because the Windows fonts are all different. I guess I can accept that taking documents authored under X11 and opening them under Aqua will likewise cause them to look significantly different.
Regarding the drop-caps, I notice in the OOo bug list, there are numerous issues still outstanding. None of them appears to address the issue I’ve observed. Still, I may need to wait for version 3.1 before they work correctly. (I might get a chance to look into the issue I’m experiencing in more detail. If so, I’ll submit a bug report, if the issue has not already been addressed.)
-TimK
OpenOffice.org is a mediocre alternative to Microsoft Office for some tasks.
Cons:
No OS level file locking support
Poor tab support in Word documents
Poor cell formatting behavior in Excel spreadsheets
I got burned by OpenOffice. I stuck my neck out as an IT administrator in my company and made a suggestion to use OpenOffice as an alternative to Microsoft Office in order to save money. Management at my company liked the idea and went along with it; half of the company opted to use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office… we made it a voluntary thing. Anyway, a year later, with the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0, we start running into many problems that have been identified, and there doesn’t seem to be any initiative to resolve these issues by the developers.
Effective last week, we are back to Microsoft Office only as our corporate standard; and, we have purchased several new licenses of Microsoft Office for everyone.
If you’re thinking about bringing it into your company to save a little money; my advice: don’t waste your time…. buy Microsoft Office.
Windows
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX102855291033.aspx
Mac
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008/default.mspx
Amnesiac:
Blame the software for your poor roll-out, eh?
Even lazy people like you would plan to support your users if you rolled out a new commercial Office alternative. When delivering OpenOffice, however, I frequently see lazy IT staff do what you did: give it to the users, give them no support or training, and then blame the software when the users don’t like changing.
Your “cons” are factually incorrect.
– OOo locks open files exactly like MS Office does.
– Tabs are supported quite well. We use OOo documents with tabs and indents and it works at least as well as in Word.
– Cell formatting in spreadsheets works perfectly. We use spreadsheets, originally written in Excel, that used complex formatting including conditional formats. We moved them to OOo and they continued to work perfectly.
– “there doesn’t seem to be any initiative to resolve these issues…” Translation: “I couldn’t be bothered to work with the bug tracker to actually submit bugs. I get confused when I don’t get charged $195 per incident for support. Or I submitted a bug that turned out to be my own failure to read the manual and I was offended when someone called me on it, so I refuse to ask anyone for free support anymore.”
The OOo team has a stellar track record of identifying important bugs and fixing them promptly. The same cannot be said of Microsoft.
OpenOffice.org 3.0.0 has only been out for a very short time. It has some font formatting issues, which are being cleared up. It probably has a few other significant bugs as well. Just like major new releases of Office. But you had your users blindly upgrade to a major new X.0.0 release on zero day without paying any attention to outstanding issues or testing the software first, didn’t you? MS shops spend lots of time waiting until MS fixes the bugs in their initial releases and testing the software before allowing users to deploy, but you don’t bother to do the same for the alternatives, did you?
Properly deployed, OOo won’t save you a little money over Office… it will save you a LOT of money, and users who are properly trained and supported are just as happy with OOo as they are with Office (in many cases at our site, much more happy). And the ability to deploy the same package, with ALL features, on spare machines and workers’ home machines at no additional license cost is a major benefit as well.
Lazy people like you tell your management that the failed deployment was because the software was no good, to cover up your failure to do your job. Shame on you.
So helpful for you to give links to buy Office. MS-trained IT staff know one trick, and they desperately want everyone else to think that it’s the only trick out there so they don’t look so ignorant.